Here in Highland Park » family

Sunset and Scallions

Leora — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 19:27:07 +0000

We just came back from a fun ski vacation at Stratton Mountain in Vermont. The skiing went well, despite the fluctuating ski conditions (rain one night) and up and down weather. My daughter now eagerly skis a longish trail on the side of the mountain called Lower Tamarack.

On the food front, finding food for us to eat for 3½ days is a bit of a struggle. This year, I packed various homemade food over the past two months that I had frozen in advance for vacation. The potato latkes from Chanukah, for example, were OK since I had packed little applesauce cups as well, so they had a nice condiment to go with them. Spaghetti pie (recipe in Honest Pretzels by Mollie Katzen), however, normally one of my daughter’s favorite dishes did not freeze and defrost nicely into a tasty dish. Most of it got thrown out, unfortunately. The homemade mushroom barley soup was a hit, but the prepared Tabatchnick’s frozen mushroom barley soup not as much. My kids normally like macaroni and pizza slices, but how many of those can one eat? Ditto for Streit’s canned minestrone soup – all my kids like that soup, but not for every meal. My family eagerly consumed leftover chicken soup last night when we got home.

For myself, I made brown rice in the crockpot two nights in a row (1 part rice to two parts water). I bought scallions and parsley in a supermarket right before we got to Stratton. Scallions are an improvement over bringing an onion and a knife and then ignoring the onion for the duration of the trip. You can cut scallions with a plastic knife, if necessary. Also, one year I brought lettuce on our winter trip, only to find it had frozen and wilted on the journey. Parsley holds up better in the winter weather. I’ve also learned to bring a few bags of frozen vegetables – easy to store, easy to prepare.

If you bring your own food on vacation, what tips do you have for storing, preparing or serving the food?

Eaten by a Purple Monster

Leora — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 10:41:42 +0000

Some bloggers have suggested that one do video as part of one’s presentation (especially if you are marketing a product or service). However, having seen some poorly made videos by some bloggers, I will continue to specialize in coding, graphics, social media and writing short web content. Also, I see via my middle son how much energy goes into creating what I consider to be a good video.

Hope you enjoy his latest claymation film creation, which uses clay for creatures.

Candles – A Short Film

Leora — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 00:43:49 +0000

If you are seeking plot or theme, wrong film. It’s about the candles, plain and simple. If you look at this on YouTube, you’ll notice my son added a lot of tags, including a variety of spellings of Chanukah. Funny thing is, none of those are the way I would spell Hanukkah. My WordPress tag spells it like this: חנוכה (that says Hanuka in Hebrew). There’s only one way to spell it in Hebrew – or maybe one can spell without the vav in the middle, but the “real” way is with those five Hebrew letters.

Same son gave a d’var Torah (words of Torah) today in front of our shul. The gist of it was, one of the reasons if you are not Jewish that you may know about Chanukah is that we Jews have an obligation for what is called persumei nisa, publicity of the miracle. This obligation is unique to the holiday of Chanukah, and the reason can be found in history. The Assyrian Greeks wanted to the Hellenize the Jews, and they were a powerful force. The Jews had not had an adversary like this one before, one which worshiped the body and beauty. In reaction we are obligated to publicize that we are not accepting Hellenization by lighting the candles in front of a window and showing our Judaism.

Elegant Woman in Pink Painting

Leora — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 10:24:33 +0000

Elegant Woman in Pink, painting by my daughter, June 2011

My daughter painted this elegant woman in pink in her art class with teacher Jill Caporlingua. Jill has a Facebook page for her students’ art work – if you go to http://www.facebook.com/gallerychaos2, you can see many paintings by a variety of students of all ages.

If you or a friend has a small business, you can learn how to put up a Facebook business page by reading Ease of a Facebook Business Page.

And I usually wait until Friday to link to other bloggers’ posts, but I did so enjoy these drawings for Jewish months by two of Mrs. S.’s children.

Review with Painting

Leora — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 17:34:51 +0000

detail of still life oil painting by Elaine Wenger

This is a detail of a still life painting by my mother, Elaine Wenger. You can click on the image to see the whole painting. I love the strokes of red and orange.

On My Blog

Review of a book: The River Midnight

This week I converted my blog to what is known as Responsive Web Design – in other words, the blog should look good both on large windowed browsers and on small mobile phones. You can see what I mean by shrinking the corner of the browser page.

Elsewhere in the Blogosphere

First, I want to show you Robin’s cherries. This luscious photograph inspired a whole post that is still in my head. I will let you know if the post becomes reality. Speaking of Robin, if you have summery photos, you might want to participate in Summer Stock Sunday.
Miriyummy reminisces on childhood memories of the Catskills. And be sure to read her interview with Batya Medad.
Ilana-Davita has written of the 2011 Philosophy exam in France. Which question would you pick? I chose “Can liberty be threatened by equality?”
Among other books, Rayna Eliana reviewed The Coffee Trader which transports the reader to Seventeenth Century Amsterdam.
Laura at Pragmatic Attic has some tasty fish recipes.
Know anyone who runs a small business? They should check out my post Ease of a Facebook Business Page.

Review with Mime

Leora — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 21:45:06 +0000

Mime performing on the boardwalk in Asbury Park, New Jersey

It was fun to watch this mime perform on the boardwalk in Asbury Park. He would start to move towards you and then suddenly stop and freeze. When I gave my daughter some money to put in his bucket, he motioned toward her, but she didn’t know why. You can see what happened next in the photo at the bottom.

On My Blog

The ~~BIG~~ GIGANTIC news today in our household is that the RPRY team of middle son (5 of them) won the Torah Bowl Championship. They previously won the New Jersey division, and today they beat New York schools SAR and HALB. Torah Bowl is sort of like Jeopardy – they get asked questions about certain parts of the Torah, and they have to answer quickly.

Elsewhere in the Blogosphere

I got a kick out of this video of the preparation of a health salad. But he never does explain why he doesn’t think you should wash vegetables if you grow them in your own garden.
Ilana-Davita conducted an interview with Rabbi Josh Yuter.
Rayna Eliana reviewed City of Dreams, a historical novel that takes place in Amsterdam.
I enjoyed chatting with Mrs. S. last week about Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. If you haven’t watched it, I recommend it. It’s historical.
Sparrow Chatter has some exquisite shots of a florist’s window.
Batya talks about problems with the new trains in Jerusalem and a certain politician who created many of the problems.
Robin is starting Summer Stock Sunday 2011 – and these mime photos are my first entry.

Here’s my daughter and the mime – he had motioned toward her so she could get her picture taken with him. He did that to anyone who put money in his bucket.

I posted these mime photos as part of Straight Out Of the Camera -I have a bit of time online on Saturday night. On Sunday, I’ll be marching down 5th Avenue in New York City with my kids’ school.

Ballerina in Teal

Leora — Tue, 17 May 2011 17:10:12 +0000

Ballet Dancer in Teal, Winter 2009

This blog got an overhaul this morning, but you may not notice many changes (feel free to comment on the ones you do notice). I updated the theme of the blog to a child of the Twenty Ten theme. What does that mean in English? It just means the code is more 2010 than the previous theme, which I created myself from scratch in 2007. So it helps me out technically with adding new plugins to the blog, such as the Add This plugin so you can easily share a post on your favorite social media site, such as Facebook or Twitter.

There is a contest on my other site, Websites for Small Biz, that offers free postcards. Yay – my first giveaway. Stay tuned to either of these blogs to learn more.

The girl? She’s my daughter in Winter 2009. She’s taller now and even more graceful a dancer.

Pierre and a Waterfall

Leora — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 18:11:55 +0000

Pierre, who we met previously sneaking into a warehouse to steal a suitcase, goes river boating and neglects a “Waterfall Ahead” sign.

Ballet Dancer with Red Hearts

Leora — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 14:26:57 +0000

I am very proud at how much my daughter has progressed in dance. She opened her group’s ballet performance with this move. She and her group of eight-year-old performed three nights, the youngest group to do so. Luckily, the dance teacher decorated the back walls with red, so I could use this for Ruby Tuesday.

Pied Piper of Highland Park

Leora — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 14:42:24 +0000

Unlike the original story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin, in which many children may have died of the plague, the Pied Piper of Highland Park is the story of a girl who likes to put on a show. And her mother who likes to play with Photoshop.

Her mother took all the background out of the original photo, except for a little on the right, after converting to sepia. Except for the red ribbon and the girl’s face.

A Photoshop brush of a star helped create a vibrant background. No rats were involved in this Highland Park project. And no children died of the plague. Thank goodness!

For more photos with sepia: